There are many circumstances when it is desirable for a person to discreetly determine if unknown persons within a local area are members of a determined group or have compatible interests or other attributes and/or discreetly communicate with such persons. By way of example, law enforcement personnel engaged in tactical operations wherein stealth is essential need to know if other law enforcement personnel are within a tactical venue, without making a general announcement. Similarly, military personnel engaged in covert operations, (e.g., not in uniform) need to know the identity and location of team members, without giving up their location to a foe. Often it is operationally prudent to conceal a soldier's appearance from the enemy by traveling in disguise and adopting the appearance of the enemy. In these situations, accurately identifying fellow soldiers as distinguished from opposing fighters is difficult if not impossible. Further urban environments make for poorly defined battlefields. Battlefields in which military team members cannot be distinguished from hostiles because of poor lighting conditions or because in an urban fighting environment in building sweeps, the building interior precludes eye to eye contact between team members, necessitate some type of identification, communication and location means.
In covert special operations stealth is essential to a successful operation. Stealth often employs camouflage or non standard fighting uniforms, (e.g. disguise or sniper ghillie suit). Not knowing your team members location can be deadly. Such tactical situations often occur in semi and complete darkness where identifying markings on team members clothing may not be noticeable, as a consequence military team members may be mistaken for enemy combatants.
Socializing is another setting where private identification, location and communication can be of tremendous help, albeit typically not lifesaving. Individuals seeking an intimate relationship may like to know if a compatible person who is also seeking an intimate relationship is in the vicinity. If such a person is in the vicinity, the parties may benefit greatly from notification, location and communication. These are but a few examples of circumstances where it would be desirable to discretely determine whether two nearby individuals, who may not know each other, are a match (i.e., have a degree of correspondence which is sufficient to qualify as a match between them based upon determined criteria).
Problems with conventional methods of determining compatibility include risks of revealing one's own preferences and location, misidentification, rejection and embarrassment. Oftentimes, it is impractical for a person to announce his/her interests and openly inquire if other people in the vicinity are a match. This is particularly true in crowded venues and operations where military personnel risk giving up their location by inquiring if other individuals in the vicinity are friends or foes. Additionally, enemy troops may adopt the appearance of friend (e.g., wearing U.S. military uniforms in an effort to conceal their true identity).
In another setting, an individual seeking a date may be embarrassed to learn that a person to whom they are attracted is unavailable or not interested. Additionally, the person seeking a date may miss an opportunity to meet a nearby compatible person.
To overcome these problems, a wireless, portable device containing a personalized user profile that is installed, edited by and managed by the user on the user's device is needed. Preferably, the device is equipped and configured to sense the presence and determine the location of nearby devices that contain compatible profiles.
The invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems and solving one or more of the needs as set forth above.